The Canadian Election of 2015: Year In Review 2015

Originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival content. Learn more.

This article was originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year, an annual print publication that
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On Oct. 19, 2015, voters in Canada’s 42nd general federal election returned a Liberal majority government under leader Justin Trudeau. The result ended almost a decade of minority and majority Conservative governments under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The victory marked an incredible rebound for the Liberal Party, which had suffered its worst electoral defeat in history in the previous federal election, in 2011.

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The newly elected incoming Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and his wife, Sophie …

Chris Wattie—Reuters/Landov

At 78 days, the campaign was the longest in the country’s modern history, more than doubling the five-week periods that had been common since the 1990s. The lengthy official campaign resulted in increased spending limits for political parties and curtailed the ability of third-party advocacy groups to advertise immediately prior to the election. Pundits suggested that the ruling Conservatives, the best-funded party and a major target of organizations that promoted an “Anyone but Conservatives” voting strategy, would likely benefit from those election rules.

In calling the election in August, Harper encouraged voters to focus on leadership, economic, and security issues. New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Thomas Mulcair and Trudeau both spoke of the need for change after Harper’s tenure in office. Having served as the official opposition in the House of Commons since their 2011 electoral breakthrough, the New Democrats emphasized Mulcair’s impressive performance in parliamentary debates and his experience as a provincial cabinet minister in Quebec to suggest that he was the best-suited candidate to provide change yet also stable and effective government. The Liberals—whose youthful leader had been subjected to months of devastating Conservative attack ads that argued that he was “just not ready” for the job of prime minister—highlighted their party’s leadership team and contended that policies directed at helping the middle class were the type of change Canadians wanted.

In an unprecedented situation, when the campaign began, it appeared that any one of the three major political parties—the centrist Liberals, the centre-right Conservatives, and the centre-left NDP—conceivably could emerge victorious, though very few political analysts expected any of them to secure a majority. Indeed, national public opinion polls placed each of the parties in first, second, and third position at various points during the campaign and reported a remarkable three-way tie for first place (within a poll’s margin of error) for more than a week mid-campaign. Although opinion polls taken at the beginning of the campaign showed that all three parties were competitive nationally, the NDP had been ascendant in the polling since the shocking majority victory of its provincial counterpart earlier in the year that ended 44 years of dynastic rule by the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta. Building on overwhelming popular support in the predominantly Francophone province of Quebec, the NDP took an early lead over the governing Conservatives. The Liberals began the campaign in third place.

In a change from recent practice whereby a consortium of television broadcasters organized one leaders’ debate in each official language, five debates were held between August 6 and October 2 that were sponsored by various media outlets and charitable groups. Harper, Mulcair, and Trudeau were invited to all of these debates, whereas Elizabeth May, leader of the environmentalist Green Party, and Gilles Duceppe, leader of separatist Bloc Québécois, were controversially each invited to participate in only two. Political commentators suggested that there were no “knockout” moments in any of the debates and that all of the leaders performed reasonably well; however, Trudeau, in exceeding very low expectations, was able to use his performance in those debates to remove lingering doubt about his abilities.

The Conservatives’ campaign was hampered by a number of events in August and early September. First, the trial of Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery, resumed on August 12 with testimony by Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff, and later by Benjamin Perrin, formerly a lawyer in the prime minister’s office. Testimony and evidence presented at the trial appeared to contradict Harper’s assertion that no one in his office but Wright had known of Wright’s decision to personally repay Duffy’s ineligible Senate expenses (Can$90,000 [about U.S.$69,000]) to avoid poor press. Journalists on the campaign trail hounded Harper with questions about the trial rather than about his policy announcements.

Shortly after the trial recessed, the Conservative campaign was once again thrown off message when the global news media publicized a striking photograph of a Syrian boy’s body washed up onto a Turkish beach during Europe’s migrant crisis. (SeeSpecial Report.) Initial news reports suggested that the boy and his family were attempting to settle in Canada but had been denied entry, and an NDP MP told reporters that he had personally delivered a letter to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander from the boy’s aunt, a Canadian resident, pleading the family’s case. Subsequent news stories clarified that the boy and his immediate family were not a part of their Canadian relative’s refugee-sponsorship application; however, the incident prompted criticism of the decline in government-sponsored refugee resettlement in Canada under the Conservatives.

Political commentators suggested that two key factors contributed to the NDP’s decline in the polls over the course of the campaign. First, Mulcair vowed that his party, like the Conservatives, would not run deficits. In contrast, Trudeau’s Liberals announced that they would reverse course on their promise to balance the budget and instead run three years of modest deficits to fund an infrastructure program. Pundits suggested that this pledge allowed the Liberals to outflank the NDP on the left and to appear to promise immediate change.

The second key factor that contributed to the NDP’s fading fortunes was Mulcair’s stance in the so-called niqab debate. On September 15 a court rejected the Harper government’s appeal of a ruling that had struck down a ban on the wearing of face-covering veils, notably the niqab, when taking the oath of citizenship. The Conservatives vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court and, if reelected, to introduce legislation banning veiled citizenship oaths. The Bloc Québécois, running candidates solely in Quebec, also strongly supported a ban on veils at citizenship ceremonies. Opinion polls suggested that the proposed ban was widely popular across the country and especially in Quebec. Although both Mulcair and Trudeau opposed the ban, the NDP’s polling numbers declined sharply in the province following reaction to the court decision. Commentators suggested that subsequent announcements by the Conservatives, including proposals to ban civil servants from wearing the niqab and for a hotline to report “barbaric cultural practices,” served as wedge issues in the campaign that risked stoking xenophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment.

In the election the Liberals gained 150 seats and approximately four million more votes than their disastrous 2011 result. Winning 184 of 338 seats with 39.5% of the popular vote, the party swept all 32 constituencies in Atlantic Canada and won the constituencies in the three northern territories. In Quebec the Liberals won a majority of seats (40 of 78) for the first time since 1980. The party returned to dominance in Ontario with 80 seats and scored key victories in urban areas across the Prairie Provinces, including winning two seats in Calgary—the party’s first representation there since 1968. In British Columbia the party won 17 seats, the most since 1968. The Conservatives finished with 99 seats, securing 31.9% of the popular vote. The NDP won 44 seats with 19.7% of the vote. The Bloc Québécois captured 10 seats with 4.7% of the vote, and May was reelected as her party’s sole representative in the House of Commons, with the Green Party receiving 3.5% in the national balloting. A record 26% of MPs elected are women. Both Duceppe, who failed to win his seat, and Harper announced that they would step down as party leaders. Overall, voter turnout reached 68.5%, the highest since 1993.

Notable Liberal campaign promises included ending the first-past-the-post voting system, creating gender balance in the cabinet, revamping the Senate appointment process, restoring the mandatory long-form census, canceling the Northern Gateway pipeline project, increasing government-sponsored refugee resettlement, launching a national inquiry into the high number of missing and murdered aboriginal women, legalizing marijuana, and allocating increased funding for public infrastructure projects.